


Valhalla

by torviironside



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 01:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7246519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torviironside/pseuds/torviironside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lagertha says goodbye to Ragnar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valhalla

**Author's Note:**

> So I was hugely inspired by Lagertha’s goodbye scene to Ragnar and I wanted to write a little sort of I’m not sure you could consider it fanfiction necessarily but I wanted to write what I thought Lagertha was feeling during that whole process so here it is. IT’S PROBABLY CRAP but I’m posting it anyway because why not? xD Also, I assumed it was Lagertha you could hear crying b/c it makes the most sense to me (especially since it looked like she’d already been crying previous to Bjorn’s announcement).
> 
> Can also be found [here](http://historychannelvikings.tumblr.com/post/138368464292/so-i-was-hugely-inspired-by-lagerthas-goodbye) on the vikings fan blog I admin. c:

She could not recall how long she’d been crouched there, staring at the tent that Björn had disappeared into with Ragnar, part of her vehemently refusing to even think Ragnar’s body. Lagertha had seen his collapse, had watched shocked as he fell to his knees and against their son who had caught him. Yet, she was more sensible than her fierce unwillingness to believe that he was actually dead. She was a mess, and though she had attempted to be discreet about it, staying away from the others, anxiously awaiting for the moment when her son would come through the flap of the tent either with good news or the very news that Lagertha found herself dreading, she could not hide the fact that she’d been crying; worried.

  
She knew that perhaps she should not have been …she had been the one to leave him, after all. Yet, her decision so many years ago did not mean that she did not still love him. Because Lagertha did love him. Fiercely and wholly, as she always had. As he’d once loved her. Beneath everything Ragnar was still the Ragnar she’d fallen in love with, the man who had worked so tirelessly to earn her hand; to impress her. The farmer with dreams so big that even Valhalla would not be able to hold them.

  
Perhaps, she considered, her love still burning within her for Ragnar was what kept drawing her back to him. It did not matter that she’d taken a second husband after Ragnar, nor that she had potential husbands. The truth was simple in that they would never be Ragnar. She would never love them in the way that she loved Ragnar: with her whole being. It was not a love that time nor misdeeds could extinguish. Not for her, anyway.

  
Her knees had long since gone numb in the cold, the damp chill biting at her face but she did not move. Could not move. Every second that she stared at the tent had her heart in her throat, felt like a lifetime. There was only one other time in which Lagertha could recall that she felt this way: the first time she’d nearly lost Ragnar. But she had been with him then after Athelstan had pulled him from the river and the adrenaline had kept her calm as she knew she immediately had needed to tend to his wounds.

  
She had looked away then, studying the chaotic mess of footprints in the mud if only to distract herself, feeling restless though she had not moved. The squelch of footfalls in the mud drew her attention and she looked up and over, towards the noise with a jerk of her head, her heart in her throat hoping for the briefest of moments that the footfalls belonged to Ragnar. The face she saw, while undoubtedly looked like a perfect match of Ragnar and her own was a welcoming sight except for the expression on Björn’s face. His eyes were low and his head hung with a sort of defeat. Dread washed over her and pooled in her stomach like ice and for a moment longer she stayed crouched, staring at him, willing him to smile, to say that Ragnar was ill but recovering.

  
Others converged in around Björn and her position and she rose, slowly, her lips parting with the swell of emotion, her eyes puffy as she stared at him, knowing that the news her son brought was not the good news she’d been foolishly hoping for. Yet still, some defiant part of her still held onto hope even as the others came to a stop, waiting for Björn to speak that Ragnar was alive. Ragnar wasn’t well, hadn’t been well. This was not something she could save him from. Rollo stepped from the warriors gathered, seen in Lagertha’s peripheral vision and yet her eyes did not move from Björn; she didn’t dare look away from their son.

  
Lagertha swallowed hard, looked down and away briefly, moments before Björn broke his silence.

  
“You can go talk to him now.” She looked down, taking a harsh breath which left her lips in a white furl into the cold air. As the truth weighed upon her heart like a sudden weight of a stone she started to cry again, unbidden. It was soft at first, echoed for a moment by their son’s own catch of breath as he turned away. Gradually, her sobs became harder as she felt her heart breaking inside her chest, not caring now who saw or heard her. They didn’t matter. All that mattered to her was the man that she loved lay lifeless beneath the tent and the grief that so fiercely and harshly consumed her now.

It had taken Lagertha some time to collect herself and when she did she pushed open the tent flap and slipped inside it, finding that it was well lit. It was hard to imagine Ragnar laying within the wood coffin, utterly devoid of the life that he’d always been full of. His blue eyes, always the most beautiful thing in her world, smoldering with the familiar mischief and the coy smirk that she had grown to adore over her years of knowing and loving him. Yet, she knew it must be true. Björn would not lie about something like that. She moved towards the coffin slowly, reaching up to touch the intricately carved and painted wood with her fingertips, her hands hovering only a little over it’s lid.

  
“Who knows Ragnar what the Gods have in store for us? But this, I can never imagine,” She shook her head as she spoke to him, speaking matter of factly. She fixed the coffin in a stare, lowering her head as she spoke, speaking to Ragnar as if he were listening to her. Part of her hoped that he was, where ever he was. “If you have gone to Heaven, then we will never meet again,” The words hurt as she spoke them but her voice and the seriousness it had taken did not once waver. She crouched down, her hands sliding down the side of the coffin, “And yet,” She spoke feverishly in a whisper. “I think that Odin will ride like the wind and rescue you,” Her words were passionate, hopeful. “And take you to Valhalla where you belong, my own sweet Ragnar,” Her lips were close to the coffin as she spoke to him. “And there-” Her forehead fell lightly against the wood that held his body, her thumb caressing the smooth wood as if it were his face. “there we shall meet again. And fight,” She breathed fervently, a smile gracing her face for the briefest of moments as she imagined it. “And drink and…love one another.” These words came out slower but louder than the others, and she looked down gripped by the grief of her lost love once more.


End file.
